Y’all saw what happened to The New Republic recently, right? It’s 30-year-old rich-kid owner destroyed its editorial vision, and destroyed the magazine. But hey, it’s his magazine: he bought it, he can do with it what he wants. It has always lost money, and needed either donors or an owner willing to subsidize it at a loss. It got a rich owner. And that was the end of TNR as everybody knew it.

It is an unfortunate reality of opinion magazines that they—we—cannot survive on subscriptions and advertising alone. If an opinion mag doesn’t have a sugar daddy, it will depend on individual donors who share the magazine’s vision, and who believe that keeping its voice in the public square is worth a gift of their own resources. It is also an unfortunate reality that my investments in Powerball tickets have not yet paid off, denying my dream of being TAC’s sugar daddy. We live in a vale of tears.

Seriously, though. At TAC, we are at a disadvantage because our kind of conservatism is not the sort that delights the donor class on the Right. We favor foreign-policy realism, and non-interventionism, from a conservative perspective. We are skeptical of the market and of Wall Street — again, from the Right. In the years to come, as the GOP maneuvers away from social conservatives as a liability and the popular culture becomes more libertarian, my writing here at TAC will continue to defend traditional social conservatism and religious liberty.

Doing this work costs money. We would not be here today if not for many devoted donors who believe in TAC. We will not be here tomorrow without them — and without you. In this time of year-end giving, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to The American Conservative, so that we can defend the indie-right base, and expand it, especially during the Republican dominance of Washington in the next Congress. I don’t know about you, but it matters a lot to me that the pro-war, pro-Wall Street forces that set the policy and the tone for American conservatism know that they do not have a monopoly on conservative discourse. If this is important to you as well, then please help us.

Donate here. Any gifts between now and year’s end will be matched, up to $20,000 by the generosity of two other donors.